


Kill the Boy

by Copperonthetongue



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arya doesn’t fuck off to the east, Baby dragons - Freeform, Betrayal, Courtier wrangling, Dragons, F/M, Family, Fire, Gen, Ice, M/M, Old Magic, Targaryen Restoration, The King is NOT in the North, Varys gets It done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 17:08:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19468384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Copperonthetongue/pseuds/Copperonthetongue
Summary: The Spider’s attempt to poison Queen Daenerys after the death of Rhaegal and Missandei’s execution on the walls of King’s Landing succeeds, now Jon Snow must become Aegon Targaryen if he means to topple a tyrant and avenge his family, but how far will he be willing to go to claim a throne he’s never wanted?(This will be a multi-chapter fic, but the Archive is being problematic this evening.)





	Kill the Boy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AngelQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelQueen/gifts).



When Jon arrives at Dragonstone, he knows by the expression on Lord Tyrion’s face that something has gone terribly wrong. There’s a glassy sheen to the smaller man’s normally lively green eyes and his shoulders are slumped in what appears to be dejected exhaustion. Jon doesn’t know for certain exactly what it is that’s happened, but he suspects the answer already, his stomach growing ever more leaden with dread with each step he takes towards the other man. Jon doesn’t want the answer to the question his heart is screaming. What he wants is to turn around, get right back in his skiff, and sail for the nearest port to Winterfell and never leave again. 

He does none of those things. Instead, Jon looks down at the man who he knows is about to change his life forever. “Tell me,” Jon rasps, his hands fisting at his sides.

“Queen Daenerys is dead, Your Grace,” Tyrion says, even as he kneels in the sand at Jon’s feet, his head bowed. 

For a moment, time seems to stand still around them, and Tyrion’s words echo so loudly in Jon’s head that it feels as if his skull might split open. The dwarf had called him ‘Your Grace’. He knew. Somehow, Tyrion Lannister knew a secret that only Jon, Sam, and Jon’s own blood kin had been privy to. Daenerys wouldn’t have told him. Jon hadn’t told him either, and Tyrion hadn’t spoken to Bran before his departure from Winterfell. Jon had, however, seen him on the ramparts with Sansa, the weak Winter sun shining in his sister’s scarlet hair. 

Sansa. 

Sansa had told him. 

Jon can’t breathe, can’t move. He can’t think of anything but the sweetness of Dany’s lips and the fear in her eyes when she’d begged him not to tell his sisters his secret. Jon wonders if it’s possible to die of grief. He suspects not, however. The gods weren’t that merciful. At least none of the ones he knew. 

“How?” The word claws its way free of Jon before he can even attempt to choke it back, and even to his own ears, he sounds exactly as broken as he feels.

“Poison. I—” Tyrion cuts himself off, looking away from Jon and back out at the sea as he seems to struggle to gather his composure. 

“Tell me,” Jon says, and from the way Tyrion flinches at Jon’s words, they might as well have been a lash. 

“I made a terrible mistake,” the dwarf says miserably, and it’s all Jon can do not to grab him by his throat and shake him for his prevarication. Luckily, it seems that Tyrion can sense that Jon is rapidly running out of patience, because he continues hurriedly, words tripping over one another in his haste to get them out. 

“At Winterfell, your sister told me the truth about who you are, and then, on our journey back here, I told Varys. I only wanted his advice, Jon. You have to believe that, if you believe nothing else. I didn’t know what he was going to do.”

Jon’s patience snaps like a brittle branch at last, and in three long strides, he’s closed the distance between himself and the dwarf, and in the very next breath, before Jon can even think to stop himself, he’s hauling the smaller man bodily up off the ground. His hands are fisted in the fabric at the front of Tyrion’s fine surcoat and Jon is snarling into the smaller man’s terrified face as if it were Jon that was the direwolf, not Ghost.

“WHAT DID YOU DO!” 

It’s only the panic in Tyrion’s wide green eyes that makes Jon fight to reign in his temper again — not because he isn’t angry, but simply because Jon isn’t a bully. He’s never had any patience for those who are cruel to those who can’t defend themselves, and no matter what’s happened, Jon has no intention of allowing it to make him the very thing he’s always despised. That’s not the man he is, not the example he means to set for those who look to him for guidance, and so he lets Tyrion go, loosening his clenched hands from the other man’s clothes and dropping him unceremoniously down into the sand again.

Jon stands there on the beach, Tyrion Lannister frozen at his feet, as he wrestles with his temper as if it is a beast that means to rip its way out of his body by main force. Jon clenches his eyes closed and focuses on his breathing, on the hammer of his own heart and the pounding of the waves behind him, but he feels like he’s dying, like he’s drowning in fire. He pushes it back regardless, one inch at a time, and while he can feel the worried weight of Tyrion’s eyes on him, he pays it no mind. Jon is not an animal, and he will not be ruled by his rage. Fury had cost the lives of many good men at the Battle of the Bastards, and Jon had learned from his mistakes. Never again would he let his temper overrule his head. 

When he opens his eyes again he can see the surprise on Tyrion’s face, and what looks like the faintest hint of respect. “Get up. You can explain while we walk to the castle because this isn’t the place for us to have this conversation.”

Jon is moving already, before Tyrion can even stammer out a reply, and as they walk, Tyrion matches Jon’s steps as best he can. Jon immediately forces himself to only walk at a pace that he knows the smaller man’s short legs can match. 

“When we arrived, Euron Greyjoy ambushed us. He killed Rhaegal. Shot him out of the sky with a sort of weapon I’ve never seen before — a more powerful version of a scorpion. There were dozens of them, and when they couldn’t reach the queen, they turned on us and shredded our ships. I only barely made it to shore myself. Many others didn’t. Once we had, we quickly realized that Missandei was missing. At first, we thought she might have drowned, but the truth was worse. Much worse.” 

Jon comes to an abrupt stop, nearly causing Tyrion to stumble. 

“Worse?” Jon asks incredulously, because he can’t imagine what could be worse than death by drowning.

“Greyjoy had captured her, and when I convinced Queen Daenerys to speak with Cersei one last time to offer to allow her to surrender and spare the people further bloodshed… Cersei executed the girl right in front of us. She had the Mountain cut off her head while the queen watched.” 

Tyrion is right, Jon thinks to himself. That was definitely worse. 

“She didn’t take the death of her hand-maiden—“ To Jon’s surprise, Tyrion pauses abruptly, and as he watches, a hint of pain flickers across the older man’s tired, bearded face. When Tyrion speaks again, his voice is soft and sad. “No. I won’t mince words. Not now. Not this time. Missandei deserves better than my prevarications. They both do. Missandei was her friend — her only friend remaining at that point — and Cersei made Daenerys watch her die. And, worst of all, the girl’s last word before her death was ‘Dracarys’. It broke the queen’s heart, Jon. I swear to all the gods, I could hear it shatter when Missandei’s body hit the ground.“

“She locked herself in her rooms for a day and a half when we returned to the island, not sleeping, not eating. Varys asked me to convince Grey Worm to at least get Her Majesty to drink some water, so I did— “ Tyrion stops to gather himself before he continues. “It was poisoned.”

“How was that possible?” Jon spits angrily, glaring venomously at the older man as he cuts him off.

“I don’t know Grey Worm well, but I do know how seriously the man took Dany’s safety! He always tasted every bit of food and drink he brought her before he gave it to her, and if he couldn’t do it himself, then one of the other Unsullied would do it in his place. How could anybody have gotten poison past him?”

Jon watches Tyrion shut his eyes again and hears him sigh heavily. He pinches the scarred bridge of his nose before meeting Jon’s gaze again.

“I should have seen it coming. I should have remembered what Varys told me about how he grew up, but I didn’t. I didn’t, and because I trusted him, I failed her. She needed me, and I failed her.”

Jon has never heard the dwarf sound so bitter or look so defeated as he does standing there with frustrated tears in his eyes and his small hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. 

“Varys was very, very good at slight of hand, you see. He was an actor in his early youth, and then he became a thief of great skill. Eventually, he began stealing secrets instead of baubles, but for many years before that, he was the most skilled thief in all of Lys, and it was Tears of Lys that he used to murder the queen. The poison wasn’t in the flagon of water, and it wasn’t in the lemon the queen liked to add to it, either. Grey Worm tasted both, and then he filled the queen’s goblet with his own hands, added the lemon juice, and gave it to her to drink. The queen fell ill a short time later. She died this morning, just before first light.”

Jon feels like he is going to be sick himself. He’s heard of the poison before. It was what killed Jon Arryn — the very thing that led to the conflict that eventually tore the seven kingdoms apart. Jon also knows that it is an ugly, undignified and painful way to die. It breaks his heart to imagine how terribly Dany must have suffered before she died. Jon is so lost in his own pain that it takes him a moment to realize that Tyrion is still talking, but once he has, he forces himself to listen. There would be time enough for him to grieve later. All the rest of his life, in fact. 

“The poison wasn’t in the water or the lemon itself. It was on the inside of her goblet. It was coated with a chemical agent that kept it inert until the acid from the lemon dissolved it and released the poison. Tears of Lys — odorless, tasteless, and unfailingly lethal. Varys told me he switched her cup when word came about Missandei.”

That gets Jon’s attention immediately, and he feels himself go cold all over with rage. “He’s still alive?” 

Tyrion nodded, and Jon doesn’t miss the hesitation in the smaller man’s voice as he replies. “For now. He’s in the cells beneath the castle. He admitted what he’d done right away when I confronted him.”

“Grey Worm didn’t kill him on the spot?” 

Tyrion shakes his head. “It was a near thing, I confess, but I managed to keep him focused on the queen instead.”

“Did Varys tell you why?” 

It’s a foolish thing to ask because Jon doesn’t need Tyrion’s confirmation. Jon knows exactly why the Spider betrayed his mistress. Dany herself had warned Jon of what would happen if other men found out about who he was. At the time, Jon had thought her over-cautious. He’d seen her fear as senseless mistrust and paranoia. He’d thought her caution foolish, her council born from her unfamiliarity with his family. Now it seems that, once again, he’d been wrong, and just as she’d so rightly feared, it was Dany who paid the price for his stupidity and blind trust with her life.

“He said that he wanted the right ruler on the Iron Throne and that he refused to risk replacing one tyrant with another when there was a better option.” There is an apology in Tyrion’s tone, but Jon can’t find it within himself to care.

“Where’s Drogon?” Jon finds himself asking, and he isn’t entirely certain what it is that makes him do it, but he’s glad that he did when he notices how uneasy the question has made Tyrion. 

The man is hesitant to answer, but he does, eventually. “He’s on the cliffs with her body. Her Majesty asked to be carried out to him so that he wouldn’t tear the castle apart trying to reach her as she died. He hasn’t moved since she took her last breath and he won’t let anybody close enough to tend to her remains — not even Grey Worm — though, honestly, Grey Worm isn’t in much better shape himself at the moment.”

Jon sighs heavily. He wishes he could say he is surprised, but he isn’t. Not really. “Show me,” he replies, and even he can hear the weariness in his tone. 

Tyrion looks at him worriedly, as if the older man wants to refuse, but can’t quite figure out how to do it respectfully. Eventually, Tyrion gives way and leads him onto the battlements and then down, following the ancient stone pathway down to the cliff face that had once been the favorite basking spot of Dany’s three dragons. 

Her children. 

Drogon is alone on the grassy expanse now, his massive bulk curled into a tight ball. Jon knows that the dragon is wrapped around Dany’s body, and he knows it because that’s exactly what he wishes he could do, himself. Drogon doesn’t move as Jon approaches, doesn’t acknowledge his presence at all. If Jon didn’t know better, he might worry that the black dragon is dead. Tyrion waits back on the battlements, not daring to risk rousing Drogon’s fury without his mother’s presence to control him, watching worriedly as Jon walks out to face his destiny.

Drogon’s eyes don’t open until Jon is nearly within touching distance, but when they do, Jon can see the dragon’s misery burning plain as day in their scarlet depths. He doesn’t need words to understand that Drogon hurts, because the dragon’s pain is one that Jon shares. In that moment, Jon realizes that he and Drogon now have much in common. Drogon’s mother is gone now, just as Jon’s is, and his brothers are gone as well. The great black dragon is now as alone as Jon has been for so many years. Jon’s been lonely for longer than he cares to remember, really.

Even as a child, he’d watched from the outside of his family, never really part of things, but just close enough to see what he was missing. Both he and Drogon are now trapped in a strange land full of strange people for whom they have little patience and even less fondness. The south was as alien to Jon as Westeros must be to the dragon, and there is a sad kinship in that knowledge. 

“I’m so sorry,” Jon says, his voice cracking on his own grief as he reaches out, laying one shaking hand on Drogon’s nose, fingers stroking tenderly over his dark, pebbled hide. The black dragon makes a soft keening sound in reply, and the pitiful sound of it breaks Jon’s heart all over again. 

Drogon lets his red eyes close again, but one great wing lifts at last and Jon can see Daenerys beneath it. She looks so small, lying there on the ground — smaller than she ever had when she was still alive, now that the fire in her has gone out forever. Jon has never seen anything so wrong, so horribly unnatural, as Daenerys’ empty, blindly staring eyes. The earth is rent and torn where she lays, and if Jon had to guess, he would say that it was Drogon who had done it, perhaps in his desperation to keep his mother close, her simple white shift is soaked with blood, the torn ground beneath her dark with it. 

Jon ducks under Drogon’s wing, and it falls closed behind him again once he has. It seems that the dragon is willing to allow him to pass, but no one else. When Jon kneels down on the ground beside Daenerys, he can’t stop himself from pulling her limp body into his arms, heedless of the blood and foulness of death on her body and on the ground beneath her. He knows death better than most, and there is nothing that can keep him from her. 

Jon presses his face into her loose, shining silver hair. It’s still beautiful even now, and if he closes his eyes tightly enough, he can almost pretend that she’s still there with him, that she’s only sleeping and at any moment, she will wake and smile at him again — perhaps scold him for brooding. 

Dany could always find a way to make him smile.

“I’m sorry,” Jon rasps into her hair, his voice gone ragged with his own grief. “I’m so sorry, Dany.” 

Jon allows himself to cry then, sheltered beneath the canopy of Drogon’s wing. It hurts. Losing her hurts him more terribly than actually dying had. Jon remembers dying, remembers the agony of it, but this is worse — worse even than it had been losing Ygritte — because this time, he’s mourning more than the woman he loves. Dany is gone, and that means that, unless Jon is willing to take up her banner and lay claim to a life he’s never wanted, her dream of a better world will die with her. 

This is his fault. Jon can’t deny it. Not even to himself. 

Dany was murdered by other men’s ambition and Jon’s own reckless stupidity and arrogance. Jon has never had any interest in playing the Great Game, as Tyrion called it. He has hated it from the beginning because he has never craved power, never craved what other men seemed to covet. He’d made the mistake of allowing himself to forget that, just because he wasn’t playing, that didn’t mean that others weren’t. 

Daenerys Targaryen is dead, and now Jon Snow must join her, or risk betraying her one final time. Jon finds that he can’t help but think of Maester Aemon and his quavery old voice as the old man had commanded Jon --- all those years ago--- to kill the boy and let the man be born. 

Jon is the boy, now, and Aegon the man, and one must die for the other to live because there is no room in the world for both, not anymore.

Jon must carry Dany’s dreams into the future, and to do that he must dethrone the woman who had nearly doomed the world to die for her own selfish desire for power. A nameless bastard would never be able to unite the Seven Kingdoms against Cersei Lannister-- but Aegon Targaryen, Sixth of his Name could.

Jon bids the man he had once been farewell as he presses one last kiss to Dany’s cold lips, while he would always be Jon in his own heart, from this moment forward...the world must see him as Aegon. 

He won’t fail Dany again.

Jon picks up Daenerys’ body gently, settling her carefully in his arms before he stands, her silver head tucked tenderly under his chin and to his mild surprise, Drogon lifts his wing again to let him pass. 

As he steps out from beneath the leathery black and scarlet canopy, he both feels and hears Drogon suck in a mighty, deep breath.

As a torrent of fire rains down on him, Jon can’t help but be relieved. 

The fire hurts at first, or perhaps it’s only that Jon expects it to hurt, and so it does. The pain fades, however, and to his shock, Jon realizes that he isn’t burning. The fire surrounds him. He can feel it licking against his skin, and the sensation is nothing like anything Jon has ever experienced before. 

Jon isn’t burning, but he realizes that Dany is. He clutches her close, but under the torrent of fire pouring forth from Drogon’s mouth, her body crumbles to ash in his arms, and the brisk wind blowing across the cliff face carries it out over the glittering sea. 

Jon’s arms aren’t empty, however. As Jon looks down wide-eyed at where Daenerys’ body had been only moments before, he realizes that he’s cradling something against his chest, and it looks for all the world like a dragon’s egg.

**Author's Note:**

> I probably shouldn't be working on three series at once but hey, who needs sleep?


End file.
